Al6-Lancaster Farming, Saturday, June 23 2001 GRAIN, CATTLE, HOG, &MILKBFP FUTURES MARKETS Markets Courtesy of Chicago Board and Mercantile Exchange Closing Bids: Thursday, June 21,2001 Soybean Meal COLLEGE STATION, Texas Part of a small virus that at tacks only bacteria acts like an antibiotic to destroy E. coli, re searchers with the Texas Agri cultural Experiment Station have found. A report on the antibiotic action of the small virus, “Q Beta,” is reported in this week’s Science magazine. The research was funded by the National Institute of Health’s general medicine insti tute. The finding provides a new approach for designing drugs to combat many serious bacterial diseases, including E. coli, pneu monia, staph infection, ear in fections, Lyme’s disease and cholera in humans, as well as bacterial diseases in pets, live stock and crops, according to Tom Bernhardt, biochemistry doctoral student, and Dr. Ing- Nang Wang, a lead investigator on the project. Virus Found To Carry Antibiotic Against E. Coli New types of antibiotics are increasingly important because many disease-causing bacteria have become resistant to antibi otics, reducing the number of medicines available for treat ment. Researchers fear that con tinued resistance could result in epidemics of diseases once thought controlled by antibiot ics. The research at the Experi ment Station found that a pro tein within the small virus, known as a “phage” in scientific circles, does the same thing to bacterial cell walls as antibiotics. It blocks the ability of the cell to make its tough outer wall so bac teria blow up or destroy them selves rather than divide into more cells. Dead bacterial cells means an end to the illness. “This ’protein antibiotic’ is the answer to an old mystery: how Q-beta and other small phage kill bacteria,” said Dr. Ry Young, a biochemist in whose Oats lab at Texas A&M University the work was done, in collabora tion with Dr. Douglas K. Struck, a medical biochemistry and genetics professor. ‘Basically they let the cell commit suicide by dividing without making a new cell wall.” The research team expects pharmaceutical companies to further explore phages for new types of antibiot ics. “Ideally, the small bit of pro tein responsible could be mim icked by a pharmaceutical company,” said Struck, “and a drug could be made to be gen eral against many bacteria, or specific against a certain patho gen, and even better, it could easily be changed to overcome resistance.” Phages which are not the same type of viruses that infect humans, animals and plants are basically dormant bundles of DNA or RNA in protein coats until they come into contact Lean Hogs Daily Prices As of Date 06/21/01 06/21/01 06/21/01 06/21/01 06/21/01 06/21/01 06/21/01 06/21/01 06/21/01 JulOl Aug 01 Oct 01 Dec 01 Feb 02 Apr 02 May 02 Jun 02 Jul 02 Composite Volume Openjnt 06/20/01 9234 44676 Live Cattle Daily Prices As of Date 06/21/01 Jun 01 7257 7260 7207 7210 06/21/01 Aug 01 7375 7390 7360 7362 06/21/01 06/21/01 06/21/01 06/21/01 06/21/01 Oct 01 7482 7500 7475 7480 -27 Dec 01 7535 7552 7530 7532 -23 Feb 02 7585 7602 7580 7585 -5 Apr 02 7670 7675 7660 7670 -5 Jun 02 0 7340 7340 7340 unch Composite Volume Open_lnt 06/20/01 12719 113666 Pork Bellies Daily Prices As ofThursday, 21 June Date 06/21/01 06/21/01 06/21/01 06/21/01 06/21/01 Jul 01 9000 9255 9000 9232 +277 Aug 01 8900 9100 8900 9075 +233 Feb 02 7945 8057 7890 7912 +92 Mar 02 0 8030 8025 8025 +45 May 02 8180 8185 8000 8000 -30 Composite Volume Openjnt 06/20/01 914 2364 with bacteria, Bernhardt said. They then go into action, re plicating within the bacterial cell and, after only a few min utes, exploding it. Researchers have known the DNA sequence of these small viruses for about 25 years. Be cause of their simplicity, phages were used to work out basic mo lecular biology, but were aban doned as researchers shifted to study higher organisms, animals and humans. “As bacteria’s natural ene mies, their potential as sources for ways to kill bacteria should have been thoroughly explored long ago,” said Wang, “but it is only now, with the emerging worldwide crisis in antibiotic re sistance, that phages are finally - Thursday, 21 June Prev Open High Low Last Chge y o j um g 3789 3596 1385 336 63 21 7010 7060 7000 7032 +32 6765 6860 6765 6835 +B3 5705 5760 5705 5750 +55 5280 5350 5280 5315 +35 5325 5375 5325 5340 +35 5315 5315 5300 5300 +25 0 6010 5985 5985 +5 6220 6220 6215 6215 +l5 0 6230 6227 6227 unch :- Thursday, 21 June Open High Low Last Chge Open High Low Last Chge I**- 7 * a< % Prev. Open_lnt 11147 16923 8966 5580 1477 376 103 79 25 Prev. Prev. Openjnt 6066 52105 26609 16887 7743 3978 278 Volume 2135 6660 2616 831 421 55 -47 -33 Prev. Prev. Openjnt 1538 626 190 Volume 660 203 50 gaining attention in their own right. It looks like small phages are a gold mine for protein anti biotics.” Young agrees. “The important thing is that this is the second small phage which we have found to make a protein antibiotic, and other people in the lab are working on a third,” said Young. “Surpris ingly, each of these phages makes a different type of cell wall poison, and each one is a potential new model for an anti biotic.” The team hopes to find new small phages and use them to identify more “protein antibiot ics” that could be developed into practical medicines by the phar maceutical industry.
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